What hard disk to buy?

[Im Big M]

Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 2.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive or Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive or WESTERN DIGITAL CAVIAR BLACK 500GB 3.5" 7200RPM INTERNAL HARD DRIVE (WD5001AALS) or WESTERN DIGITAL SCORPIO BLUE 500GB 2.5" 5400RPM INTERNAL HARD DRIVE (WD5000LPVT)

 

[Friesiansam]

What do you intend to do with the new HDD? Do you prioritise speed, reliability or low power consumption?

 

[scout_03]

get the wd caviar black and you could go to 1 tb there no so expensive .

 

[Solandri]

Avoid the 5400 RPM WD drives (Green and Blue) at all costs. WD hard-coded a very short head parking timer into the firmware. As a result, the heads will park after about 10 seconds of inactivity.

When Windows tries to access the drive again, there is a split second pause while it waits for the heads to unpark. If Windows is trying to access something system-critical (e.g. the pagefile), the entire system will freeze while it waits for the heads to unpark. And unlike the disk spinning down to save power after a certain time interval, because it's baked into the firmware there is no simple way to modify or bypass this timer.

Games are hit particularly hard, as the fraction of a second freeze can not only get you killed in competitive gaming, it can mess up turning and aiming in single player games as the screen suddenly stops responding to mouse input.

http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-3291249/hdd-giving-problems-games.html

 

[Im Big M]

What type is better wd Scorpio Black or CAVIAR BLACK

 

[scout_03]

i use caviar on a gaming rig for around 10 years now .

 

[Solandri]

What type is better wd Scorpio Black or CAVIAR BLACK

Scorpio are 2.5" laptop drives. Caviar are 3.5" desktop drives. Because areal density (bits per area of platter surface) is the same for both drives for the same year of technology, the 3.5" drives are faster (more bits pass under the read/write heads per revolution).

So if you have the space, get the Caviar drive. Get the Scorpio only if the case can only accept 2.5" drives, or if you're trying to build a low power system and performance is a secondary concern, or if this is going to be a mobile system (smaller components require less force to move around so are more resistant to bumps and falls).